AI in accounting: 7 proven plays for a 3x faster close
AI in accounting: 7 proven plays for a 3x faster close
- The key to unlocking new business growth? Automated accounting.
- The reality: manual processes are killing productivity.
- AI-powered accounting is already becoming the new standard.
- Barriers to efficiency — complex processes and disparate systems.
- Embracing automation as a strategic mindset.
- Successful accounting automation starts with expense automation.
- Best practices: What are top finance leaders automating?
- Automate your accounting with Brex.
The key to unlocking new business growth? Automated accounting.
The mission of the modern finance function is quite simple for Teddy Collins, VP of Corporate Finance at SeatGeek. “As a finance team, our mandate is to maximize the enterprise value of the company,” says Teddy, who’s led the global digital ticket broker’s finance operations and strategy for nearly a decade.
It’s a clear directive that demands sophisticated solutions, especially as modern finance grows more complex. Global commerce and remote and hybrid workforces change how businesses spend money and complicate how finance functions — and specifically, how accounting work gets done today.
Teddy maintains that maximizing the finance team’s impact today means far more than controlling costs or managing the books. It requires creating scalable processes that drive better business decisions. “As finance leaders, we're often tasked with taking away people's budgets, saying no to new hires, or saying you can't expense this or that,” he says. “To create real progress, we need to empower our employees to spend to grow the business and company value. That requires a finance function that's a true business partner for driving growth.”
So what’s the one thing more finance leaders are doing today to drive that growth? They’re investing in AI-powered automation. For Teddy and SeatGeek, that means automating accounting — at scale. “AI tools help employees spend their time better,” he says. “They’re not filling out expense reports, and there’s more accurate data for the finance team. Even a single-digit percentage increase in productivity delivers high ROI because our people are our number one asset.”
Executive summary
Through advances in AI and automation, accounting has evolved from a back-office function into a strategic driver of enterprise value. Companies like SeatGeek, DoorDash, Lemonade, Pramand, and Scentbird are proving what’s possible using accounting automation to close the books faster, unlock new insights, and improve decision-making. In the following chapters, you’ll discover the top 7 areas to leverage AI to accelerate accounting and drive business growth.
The reality: manual processes are killing productivity.
While many businesses tout digital transformation and AI adoption as differentiators, the reality of their financial operations tells a different story: a world still burdened by paper documents, manual processes, and workarounds that cost time, money, and strategic opportunity. It all leads to overburdened accountants stuck managing inefficiencies instead of driving value.
“Our accounting team used to be drowning in manual processes,” Teddy says. “At one point, our accounting close for employee expenses was nearly 3 full working days for a team member, working through corporate card reconciliations across 15 shared department cards — trying to figure out who spent what, tracking down all the receipts, and checking coding. We’re not creating new opportunities for SeatGeek if we’re constantly chasing paper trails.”
Jessica Ray joined medical device company Pramand as controller in 2023 and inherited a small finance team that didn’t often have time for strategic analysis. “Expense reports were a manual, time-consuming process for everyone involved,” she recalls. “To achieve our aggressive growth goals — we hired a third of our employees in 2024 alone — we needed to put more controls and automation in place.”
The persistence of manual finance
50% of accounts payable (AP) invoices received by enterprises are paper documents
38% of business payments are processed manually
33% of companies rely on spreadsheets or paper for expense reporting
Letting such inefficiencies continue leads to more problems: high error rates, late payments, delayed closes, and a lot of late nights for frustrated accounting teams. And it’s not like throwing more people at the problem is the answer.
An analysis by Bloomberg reveals an acute accountant shortage in the US, with more than 340,000 fewer accountants today than the peak in 2019. It also takes 21% longer to hire for accounting roles vs. other roles — not counting the time needed to train new hires on your systems and procedures. In fact, companies can accelerate hiring by modernizing how they perform accounting, as evidenced by SeatGeek.
“Streamlining accounting workflows actually makes it easier to acquire top talent,” Teddy explains. “It would be a hard sell hiring someone to do a bunch of manual, repetitive accounting tasks day-in, day-out — nor would we want to do that. Our promise when hiring new finance and accounting personnel is to provide them exciting opportunities to grow and advance their careers."
“We’re not creating new opportunities for SeatGeek if we’re constantly chasing paper trails.”
— Teddy Collins, VP of Corporate Finance, SeatGeek
AI-powered accounting is already becoming the new standard.
Between increased operational complexity and fewer professionals to do the work, finance teams are stretched thin, leaving little room for advancing core business objectives. That’s why AI-powered automation is a clear path to improvement.
If you ask any CFO whether they’d rather grow fast or efficiently, the answer is both,” says Ben Gammell, CFO at Brex. “Intelligent automation puts you on the path to achieve both simultaneously. The longer you wait to automate and reduce workloads, the more technical debt and complexity you’re creating for yourself down the road."
This shift toward automation isn't just happening at innovative companies like SeatGeek and Pramand — it's an industry-wide movement:
- AI adoption in finance is a top priority for CFOs in 2025, along with efficient growth and improving data quality, according to Gartner.
- 41% of accountants are using AI to automate their own workflows, per KarbonHQ’s State of AI in Accounting Report 2025.
- 54% of respondents in the 2024 Intuit QuickBooks Accountant Technology Survey plan to increase automation investments in the coming months.
Venture capitalists are also betting big on accounting automation. “We think there’s a huge opportunity to automate a lot of the workflow and let the same accounting firms take twice as many clients,” Marc Bhargava, Managing Director at VC firm General Catalyst, said in a 2025 Wall Street Journal article. “The idea is not to cut people with AI, the idea is to enable them to do two to three times the work.”
“The idea is not to cut people with AI, the idea is to enable them to do two to three times the work.”
The question is no longer whether you should automate accounting with AI or even when. It’s about what your business stands to lose if accounting continues to live in spreadsheet hell and buried in manual work. Here’s what’s preventing accounting automation today.
Barriers to efficiency — complex processes and disparate systems.
Making a business purchase today is fairly easy. Sure, the sourcing and procurement process for larger purchases can be tricky, but it’s fairly easy to swipe a corporate card or fire off an ACH bank payment. The accounting of that transaction — reconciling it in your books — however, is less straightforward.
Each transaction needs to be categorized correctly, matched with receipts or invoices, and aligned with your company’s chart of accounts. Many businesses rely on outdated or manual processes for expense reconciliation — tracking expenses in a spreadsheet, sifting through stacks of receipts, chasing down team members for missing documentation, and manually entering data into accounting systems. Such processes create inefficiencies that slow down close cycles and raise the risk of errors, leading to accounting errors that complicate financial reporting and decision-making.
Another major blocker to efficiency isn’t just the complexity of finance — it’s the fragmentation of systems. It’s very common to use separate software to support procurement, expense management, tax and compliance, accounts payable, HRIS, and accounting and ERP workflows. But if these systems don’t communicate with one another, it creates massive bottlenecks in reconciliation.
Solve for 80/20 when automating
The promise of AI can drive you to move fast, but you don’t have to automate everything at once. Try applying the 80/20 principle — where 80% of results come from 20% of efforts — and take a crawl, walk, run approach:
Crawl: Identify quick wins—track manual tasks, measure time spent, and prioritize easy fixes.
Walk: Gradually automate frequent, repetitive tasks to build efficiency.
Run: Scale automation with schedulers, integrations, RPA, and AI to maximize impact.
Take expense management platforms like Concur: they’re great for tracking and approving expenses but lack a native credit card solution. That means Amex or Wells Fargo card transactions still require manual imports, categorization, and reconciliation in your accounting software — introducing unnecessary friction and inefficiencies.
And despite advancements in accounting software, many accounting tasks like these still require significant manual effort. The underlying complexity of financial operations continues to grow, making full automation difficult to achieve. That’s why “accounting software” does not equal “accounting automation software.”
When manual tasks span multiple workflows, it’s no wonder closing the books is a constant grind. This makes automation and AI-driven workflows more important than ever. It’s also why automation is more than a series of processes — it’s a business philosophy.
Embracing automation as a strategic mindset.
Automating accounting isn’t about overhauling everything — it’s about enhancing the way finance teams already operate. If you were building an accounting function from scratch today, would you design it around manual data entry, endless reconciliations, and reactive reporting? Or would you leverage automation, AI, and process standardization to create a scalable, data-driven foundation for the future?
The companies that embrace AI and automation as a core philosophy, not just a process improvement, will be the ones that scale efficiently and make better, faster decisions. Finance leaders with a modern accounting automation philosophy:
- See manual work as a blocker to growth. The more time your team spends on repetitive tasks, the less bandwidth they have for strategic decision-making.
- Trust automation as an enhancement, not a replacement. AI and automation aren’t about removing human judgment — they’re about enabling finance teams to focus on higher-value work.
- Take a data-first approach. Standardizing processes that ensure clean, structured data means fewer errors and better insights that ripple across the entire business.
- Foster a culture of continuous improvement. Moving away from the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality ensures your team can evolve with changing business needs.
The philosophy aspect is often a harder sell than the technical implementation because it requires changing mindsets and established behaviors.
“With Brex’s automated reconciliation and expense reporting across entities, Lemonade’s finance team is now able to close the books in a fraction of the time, which allows us to focus on analyzing and optimizing spend, instead of preparing and reconciling it.”
— Mike Duffy, Director, Assistant Controller at Lemonade
Successful accounting automation starts with expense automation.
So where do you start with accounting automation? Start by understanding what you can realistically automate with AI to ensure accuracy at every step. You need clean, accurate data before it hits your general ledger (GL) — and that starts with capturing spend data at the source through integrated cards, travel, and expense management.
The general ledger is the backbone of your financial reporting, but manually reviewing and coding transactions is time-consuming and error-prone. By automating expense categorization and approval workflows before data reaches your ERP, you can reduce errors and streamline the entire process.
Juan Miguel Salazar Muñoz, Controlling Analyst at Incode: “With multiple systems for cards, travel, and reimbursements, it was impossible to get a clear view of our spending. We had to manually input everything into our ERP — creating inefficiencies and adding to our workload.”
This technology sprawl also affects reimbursements. Juan said Incode had to manually issue every reimbursement through payroll, which was a 16-step process that added to the team’s workload. For Signifyd, similar manual bottlenecks created friction throughout the organization.
“Our previous expense tool made it difficult for employees to submit expenses and get the necessary approvals, so reimbursement could take weeks,” said Ty Barton, Accounting Manager at Signifyd. “The accounting department was getting a lot of negative feedback in terms of employee satisfaction.”
Ultimately, AI-powered expense automation improves accounting and unlocks the visibility, agility, and decision-making that drives the business forward.
“The transparency that Brex provides our team is unparalleled. Our finance partners are ecstatic to be able to see how spend is trending at any point in time,” said Jerome Barley, Head of Global Travel & Expense at DoorDash.
Mike Duffy, Director, Assistant Controller at Lemonade, says: “With Brex’s automated reconciliation and expense reporting across entities, Lemonade’s finance team is able to close the books in a fraction of the time, which allows us to focus on analyzing and optimizing spend, instead of preparing and reconciling it.”
Katherine Spillane, assistant controller at Avenue One, adds: “With Brex, we’re not just automating — we’re driving company-wide accuracy. With transactions automatically synced across systems, the finance team has the bandwidth to focus on outcomes and strategy for continued growth.”
7 ways AI-powered accounting drives value
The right automation strategy can transform finance. These are the top areas AI-powered automation is driving impact.
1. Automated document collection
Why it matters: Employees waste time manually collecting and submitting documentation, only to have finance teams spend countless hours chasing missing receipts and validating expenses.
How AI can help: Automatically capture and process receipts as transactions occur, and machine learning algorithms populate memos, assign departments, projects, and GL codes automatically.
Where to start: Integrate your card and expense management platform to auto-capture receipts at purchase and eliminate manual data entry with AI-powered smart coding and memo generation.
Impact: Save 300+ hours every year on manual expense tasks.
2. Accelerated expense reconciliation
Why it matters: Manual reconciliation is time-consuming and error-prone, leading to delays in closing the books.
How AI can help: Automate transaction categorization, receipt matching, and coding to ensure accuracy while eliminating tedious data entry.
Where to start: Leverage OCR technology to match receipts in any language or currency. Integrate corporate cards, travel, expense management, and bill pay solutions for richer data that enables 100% reconciliation.
Impact: Prepare 66% of expenses entirely with automations.
3. Automated reviews and approvals
Why it matters: Cumbersome manual reviews create bottlenecks and delay financial processes.
How AI can help: Auto-approve in-policy expenses and route exceptions to the right approvers instantly with minimal human intervention.
Where to start: Set up AI-powered routing to ensure expenses and invoices move efficiently through approvals with clear audit trails, focusing only on necessary reviews.
Impact: Complete expense review 4x faster.
4. Increased data accuracy
Why it matters: Manual data entry and processing inherently introduce human error, which can lead to costly mistakes, inaccurate reporting, compliance issues, and poor business decisions.
How AI can help: Automatically detect anomalies, inconsistencies, and potential errors in real-time before they impact your financial records. Machine learning algorithms also continuously improve accuracy by learning from historical data patterns.
Where to start: Set up intelligent rules and validation checks that flag potential issues for review, and reduce human intervention by offloading expense tasks to AI assistants.
Impact: Reduce errors by up to 90%.
5. Accelerated month-end close
Why it matters: The month-end close process traditionally creates a cyclical bottleneck that strains finance teams, delays financial reporting, and diverts resources from strategic activities.
How AI can help: Automated transaction categorization, real-time anomaly detection, pre-populated reconciliations, and intelligent transaction matching help you close the books 3x faster*.
Where to start: Integrate your expense automation solution with your ERP, and set up automated reconciliation workflows that run throughout the month to distribute workload evenly.
Impact: Enable a continuous close instead of grinding at the end of every month.
6. Faster payment processing
Why it matters: Manually processing an invoice can take days or even weeks, which slows down payments, increases the risk of fraud, and drives up costs.
How AI can help: Automated invoice processing captures, codes, and routes a bill automatically, eliminating the need for manual data entry, reducing processing costs.
Where to start: Consolidate bill pay, purchase cards, and expense management onto one platform, and leverage AI-powered invoice scanning and intelligent approval routing.
Impact: Reduce processing costs by 90%.
7. Real-time financial visibility
Why it matters: Many ERP “integrations” fail to accommodate custom workflows, leading to manual workarounds. True automation eliminates these inefficiencies, ensuring real-time data syncing and accurate financial reporting.
How AI can help: AI-generated suggestions and smart expense classification improve how data gets to your ERP.
Where to start: Use native integrations for NetSuite, QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, and others that automate GL coding, allow custom rules, and bi-directionally sync data in real time.
Impact: Get a reliable, single source of truth you can confidently act on.
Best practices: What are top finance leaders automating?
SeatGeek: AI-led expense documentation reduces overhead by 95%.
Through accounting automation with Brex, SeatGeek’s achieved a 99% employee compliance rate and accelerated its documentation processes by 10x. “Brex reduces our month-end close effort in a more compliant way, while helping FP&A administer budgets in real time instead of weeks after the fact," Teddy says.
The results are significant: auto-coding 99.7% of transactions and automating receipts, memos, and categorization has slashed documentation and compliance time from 22 hours to just 2 hours. Month-end close often takes just 15 minutes to complete.
“Brex is helping us control expenses while being more efficient with our number one resource — our employees,” Collins explains. "We reduced finance overhead for expense management by about 95% within 6 months of onboarding. This is how you get ahead.”
Pramand: Automated multi-entity accounting enables a 2.5x faster close.
Jessica Ray says Brex AI vastly improved Pramand’s expense management and reduced its monthly close process from 3 weeks to 6 days. Additionally, closing the books for Pramand’s multiple business entities is no longer so resource-intensive.
“I used to manage our multi-entity spending by taking every expense line and invoicing the other company,” she explains. “With Brex, those charges go directly to our other entity and I can skip the manual invoicing workaround. “Brex makes it extremely easy to separate and manage multiple entities under one parent company. It scales with our company, which makes it such a powerful solution.”
Manually creating and uploading journal entries to the ERP are also things of the past, Jessica says. “Brex’s NetSuite integration has been seamless and saves us a ton of time. It gives us back the bandwidth to focus on driving the company forward.”
Scentbird: AI-suggested rules and anomaly detection deliver 2x faster accounting.
Subscription-based fragrance company Scentbird used to spend countless hours fixing data. Each of its brands and global locations required custom accounting codes, which it couldn’t sync with its ERP and resulted in frequent errors. “It would take hours of investigation just to figure out the issue when expenses didn’t upload to NetSuite correctly,” said Amber Papp, VP of Finance at Scentbird.
So how did Scentbird streamline the coding process and eliminate those errors? “Brex’s custom rules have been super helpful. Not only can we create them, but Brex also uses AI to suggest additional rules and settings,” Amber shared. “Brex even recommended custom rules we hadn’t thought of, making the process even smoother.”
A seamless integration with NetSuite further simplified the month-end close. “Brex syncs directly with NetSuite. If something doesn’t reconcile, Brex highlights the issue and proposes a resolution. In a recent month, only two expenses needed a fix, and it just took minutes,” Amber added. “We are completing expenses and accounting twice as fast with Brex.”
Automate your accounting with Brex.
Whatever your business’s growth strategy for 2025, an AI-powered accounting automation solution will help you achieve it faster. Teddy Collins sees it as a powerful way to unlock financial data, turning insights into smarter decisions that drive the business forward.
“As a technology company, we have a lot of data,” Teddy says. “Our job is to leverage that data to improve our reporting and forecasts, ultimately leading to better business decisions. It starts with lean processes and high-quality financial and operational data. Brex automates 99.7% of our transactions with custom rules. By automating receipts, memos, and category coding, Brex makes closing the books 10 times faster — transforming how we work.”
We designed our platform to intelligently weave accounting into every product and financial process — making it a core feature, not just a downstream process. With corporate cards, expense management, bill pay, business banking, and travel solutions integrated into one global, AI-powered spend management solution, Brex empowers over 30,000 finance teams to streamline spend accounting by preparing and exporting journal entries with ease.
Leveraging Brex’s automation and rich data, teams can efficiently track and organize their accounting journal entries in one central place — before they hit their ERPs. That’s how Brex customers complete expense reviews 4x faster and close the books 3x faster*.
Get started with Brex today and transform your financial operations into a strategic advantage that fuels efficient business growth.
* Based on internal metrics from December 2024. Past performance does not guarantee future results, which may vary.
Brex intends to provide accurate information but cannot guarantee this content is current, correct, or complete.
See what Brex can do for you.
Learn how our spend platform can increase the strategic impact of your finance team and future-proof your company.
See what Brex can do for you.
Learn how our spend platform can increase the strategic impact of your finance team and future-proof your company.